Silver Slivers Upon My Tongue, or, Things I Think About in the Shower

As soon as he started playing, it all came back to me.  Blossoming in front of my eyes above the stage that held the single, spotlighted strong back of the man playing piano.

The two handmade bars of soap that you brought to me from the monastery in the woods.  One, a tar and clove and tea tree oil smelling rough cut bar : because you knew the smell of astringent and dirt turns me on, satisfies me.  This is something we have in common.  The second was plumeria, I imagine at the advice of your female friend and co-worker who went with you. (Such an odd presence she always had to us- advising you in such gendered directions.  I loved it.  You knew I got off on the feeling of my cock pressed against the inside of my perfectly pressed pants.  She knew that you should offer me flowers with a bowed head and open glass doors for me.)

I knew these two, thick bars of soap would be the last time I touched something that had been touched by your hands. Given to me by them. You produced them from your coat pockets. One each. Your hands were awkward. Uncertain.

How I would bathe myself with them in the shower. Savoring them. Wanting to save them, but not being able to.

I would take the bar into my hands
steam enveloping me
and
melt it into my breasts
around my nipples
letting the scent absorb into my skin
be inhaled into my lungs. 
I would slide it down my stomach
to the insides of my thighs
the backs of my thighs
up across my ass to my
lower back
around to my stomach
slide up my chest and behind my neck
where I would hold it
imagining you
holding onto me
one more time
the weight of your hand
behind my neck.


k.



(thank you to Nils, and company, for an incredible conjuring of images that night)
(thank you to refinery29 tumblr for assisting in finding this image from Anna Sheffield's lookbook)
(thank you to Alfred Hitchcock for the remnants of Psycho in my mouth and psyche, having watched it for the first time ever yesterday night.)

"I Looked Without Seeing, Like Someone Who Arrives at a Party From Which He Knows the Only Person Who Really Interests Him Will Be Absent"

What I've learned in the past few years is that I am no good at waiting.  I pretend to be. I distract myself with interesting jewels and objects to fascinate me. Sometimes in the form of paint, sometimes in the form of ink, usually in the form of images.  Those that make me salivate.  Sometimes, they are books.  Sometimes, they are people.  I learn leagues from all of them, and breathe in the scent of their pages and binding as deeply as I savor the taste of their skin- but I am waiting.

While I am waiting, I pretend that I am not. It is a feeble attempt to trick some superstition or dead relative my parents always told me would be watching me from above.  To outsmart them.

But I am waiting. And it is as satisfying as any self discipline can be.  Satisfying until the moment my throat opens, parched, sweat pours itself from measured skin, and nails reach out from my fingertips, finally, in unhidden want.

This torturous crumbling happens infrequently but
when it does
there is a pleasure in it's undoing that is quite
remarkable.

-k.





(title credit: A partial sentence from a story in When I Was Mortal by Javier Marías)
(photo credit: from blackmilk tumblr)

One Day, By Virtue of Dérive

It's still coming back to me.

The fingers he was shy about wearing the pages of a book meant for him.

Built for him.

Devoured by him.

The chalkboard paint that covered your kitchen walls and the pristine grocery lists you wrote upon them.

The only time you appeared truly at peace was while reading.

I admired this in you.

I feared it as well.

(pause)

A list of what I remember:

The swish of your hips.  The cut up menstrual pads in your bathroom.  The scent of flowers mixed with pine.  The shelf that held almost every work of Genet.  The pieces of paper taped to the wall telling your story of poverty and...heroin? I never knew which drugs you used. The black bands you got tattooed a few days after you met me to hide the tattoos you were embarrassed of.  You never told me what they were.  Two thick, black bands. One for your mother. One for your father.  They are still very much alive.

(pause)

I dreamt of the scar underneath your chin the night you contacted me. I had not seen it so closely, so vividly in so long.

How deceptive dreams can be.

I think of you often and always.

When reading
listening to music
walking in certain parts of the city.

It is strange
those maps we drew
and how they folded in upon me.

Zarina Hashmi, Journey to the edge of land (1994)

(title reference origin):  Dérive

Untouchable Cake

Yesterday I spent most of my day at work eating a Seahawks-themed birthday cake that was leftover from a three-year-old's birthday party and reminiscing about hot bathroom stall sex. A questionable combination, but enjoyable nonetheless: Cookie-Monster blue and Indoor-Soccer-Field green frosting; a tile floor with a peach hue from the surprisingly soft lighting of a bathroom, and the disregard for what might be viewable through that vertical-space-peep-show that all bathroom stalls seem to don above and below their locks. 
 
(pause)

I've been thinking about, considering, and investigating art, again.  Any time I feel strange or uncertain, it is what I turn to in order to inform my own art, life, and mind.  

Two days ago, I read about Jacinda Russell, an artist who, having reached a year of let downs in her own artistic ventures, created a project involving creating fake cakes and photo documenting them in bodies of water (real/man made) that she viewed as 'pristine'. She said that cake seemed to make everyone happy and that she wanted to investigate, simply, if cake would make her happy as well. (Nine Fake Cakes Nine Bodies of Water ).

On a note of Art-I-Would-Like-to-Live-Inside-of, I want to share Mariele Neudecker's piece, Stolen Sunsets (1996). Take a minute to imagine living inside of one of those cubes.  Specifically, the one on the far right/forefront.

A summary from Sculpture Today: Mariele Neudecker makes elegantly crafted three-dimensional models based on German Romantic paintings, such as those of Caspar David Friedrich, which she sets on plinths and encloses in glass tanks filled with liquid so that she can simulate atmospheric weather conditions. Her mountains and fir trees are made from fiberglass and resin and are airbrushed with acrylic paint. She hopes to evoke the concept of the sublime impresses by the Romantic paintings, even though the sublime impresses by virtue of its overwhelming size and scale.

(pause)


Overall, things have been good. 

Incredible, really.  

I'm on the cusp of a creative/internal spurt which has less to do with how many people I'm around, and more to do with how I am around them.   


Be well; be loved.  

Create. Connect.

Always.


-k.




(top photo: Untitled by Leahmiriamon on Flickr via Dystopier tumblr)

(Thanks for Dystopier tumblr and Something Between Want and Desire blog for helping me discover the Neudecker piece)

The Grey-Green of Abandoned Ships

 

I did not grow up with the sea.  It is something I am drawn to. Bodies of water in general, perhaps, but there is something specific about the depth and vastness of the ocean. I do not claim to understand it- even in its basics. But the way I am drawn to it- an apparition pulled by a dull golden thread towards it's foamy crashing- is unmistakeable, unexplained, and haunting.

The first time I became aware of it's pull was during cancer.  

It was almost always at night. Unable to sleep, I would walk up and down the streets of my neighborhood. I recall always feeling like I should be wearing some kind of flowing, scary-as-shit nightgown roaming the pavement at such ungodly hours. But I never did, and the streets and the images of waves in my head were never enough.  I would, almost always, climb into my truck and drive down to the ocean stand-in of a nearby lake. Craving salt upon my skin but settling for a puddle underneath the massive arch of a black skeleton bridge, I would sit on a rotting and damp log and stare out and into the water. 

The waves. The moon's lightening bolt reflection upon it's surface. I would think about the vague pieces of information I could recall about the moon and the waves and our bodies and the strange, glimmering fishing line that connects the three. 

In the rocking of the waves, something calmed.  In the soaked and entire cold, something numb began to feel.  Watching waves curl and turn and push and disappear, two questions emerged each time I was in the presence of water. 

Salted. Unsalted.  

Among currents and undertows, swellings and dissipations, the same two questions would spill then recede from the horizon to the dark wet rocks under my feet, and back again. 

What is it that makes us loveable? 

What is it that makes us survive?

(photo credit: englishteacups tumblr)

Jawlines and Fingertips

Peter (A Young English Girl) by Romaine Brooks

My niece once told me she looked up to me because I didn't care what anybody thought of me.  It threw me off guard but, I have to say, I took it as a profound compliment both in content and source.

Perhaps, here, one may expect a crumbling story about how in reality, I care deeply and cry often and in private about these things.

I can't offer that.

However, I've been realizing and feeling lately what she was picking up on, as she was not the first, nor the last, person to say this to me.

Obviously, it is not because I'm cool or evolved. Perhaps less obviously, it is because I am too enmeshed in my unfortified social skills and following perception to understand why people give a fuck about certain things. Or why they strive for certain things.  Social expectations, I guess.

I do try, mind you. I just never get to the point of understanding.

Not always a black sheep, just simply and obviously out of step.

The trade off and the other side of this, of course, is that the things that no one seems to care about are the things I care about so delicately.  Which may explain why most of the time I feel and dress like a lad plucked out of another point in history who's been dropped into the current year and thus feel like a total weirdo.

But I digress.


In any case, I will tell you this: 

Things have felt stoic and serious; lighthearted and perfect as of late. 

It is an incredible combination, and I am enjoying every curve of this glove of time and people quite fitted to my skin and bones.

And in this time of incense and tie wear, zippers and creased pants, shared hair pomade and propositions, I will continue to toss my glass towards everyone stomping about in their crumbling castles of judgement and feigned betrayals and say, with limp wrist and intonation: 


I just don't give a shit.






Be well; be loved.

k.
(image: Found at my favorite, Yvonne Constance Tumblr)

Puppies and Wolves: The Art of Roughhousing Without Accidental Homicide

A few weeks ago, I was in the passenger seat of a car at a red light making out with the driver. As we kissed, I could feel nervous glances being stolen towards the traffic light. Lips touching but worried. Red became green and the car rolled seamlessly forward.

A few days ago, I was in the passenger seat of another car at a red light making out with a different driver.  This time, there was no concern for the light, or for the traffic behind us. When I opened my eyes, green shown, and the taillights of the car in front of us was roughly a block away.

I've been thinking a lot about desire and class and inhibitions or lack there of.

(pause)

The past few months have been good.
Growing.
Pushing me to do what is right and what feels good in the way that happens when you invest.
Sweat.
Tear muscles.
Build things.
Lean toward tender over any other pseudo-emotion that is more or less just being a dick.
That kind of thing.

Today I'll leave you with this quote from an everyday person. Because it's what matters, and what has changed me, in that way that everyday interactions and eavesdroppings tend to.



"I've been through some things. But I stay positive because I don't give a fuck."

- lady I was eavesdropping on at a cafe eight days ago

k.

 (image from: Blackmilk Tumblr)
***********
A few nights ago, I went to see Afsaneh Najmabadi speak about transexuality and same-sex desire in contemporary Iran.  It was academic as all get out, yet she made it accessible, humorous, and relevant.  You should check her out if you haven't. You can read about the book she was talking about, here.

May the Ghost That Haunts Me Have the Voice of Chelsea Wolfe

(written slightly before midnight on December 31st.  A New Years Eve party curling in the living room, me in my bedroom packing to leave the country early the next morning.)

I've been thinking of love and light and the true beauty of one's heart, again.  It's larger than the moment.  Deeper. It's strange to watch things as they go by.

I know the difference between what I can and can't do/control/invest in/change. 

Somehow, lately, I just don't give a fuck.

I will enjoy what I enjoy and will continue to enjoy it.

(pause)

Here is to a year of pressing my heels to the ground when need be, and letting them fall backwards when that is what is called for, as well.

Here is to respect of privacy, of beauty, of love.  Here is to the slight fear that I will evaporate. These things happen.

This year, I will aim to be unafraid, to let glass shatter, mistakes be made, grounding to happen.  Stupidity will be considered, as will the whistling sound that escapes from between the precious teeth of particular ladyish lads and ladly ladies who sing to me.

(pause)

There are, indeed, different points:  It is up to us to connect them.

Be well and be loved.  Wait for noone until it is worth it.

Your heart will unfurl

and this is how you will know.







(image source: Blackmilk Tumblr)

Fuck That Shit, Little Nightingale: Let Me Show You What Love Is.

Coffee in hand: pressed, sweetened and delivered by hands that should surely be in the business of hand modelling.

Fever Ray* is playing loudly in the other room (the bathroom, technically, so that all audience members may enjoy it).  A copy of Morrissey's autobiography, a gift from a thoughtful boy, sits on the end of my deep blue comforter, his iconic tipped chin taunting me to pick it up.

Things are beautiful and blooming slowly as they should be.  I picture a rose opening, slowed to a speed that would require a full year to reveal it's glory.  Simultaneously, and quite in contrast to what I am experiencing,  I keep thinking of Wilde's story of  The Nightingale and the Rose.  If you've never read it, and have a slow day today because of the holiday, check it out.  It's brief, beautiful, horrible, and has something to accept or reject within it. Give it a read.

(pause)

Here's the deal, folks:

When you want something, go get it.  However it can happen, and especially if it requires some lovingly sneaky and/or diy tactics.

I can never express the power of simply being around people who treat you like the kingqueen (Yes, the combination of the two words:  Minus the connotation of empire; plus all of the connotation of luxurious costumery) that you are.


be well; be loved

k.

*****

*=Fever Ray is the solo project of the woman from The Knife.  I've been into it again, lately.  Here's the track that just finished- although all of it is pleasing. Fever Ray-Triangle Walks